sudden stopping, the Flamand with his wound, the shafts of the stretcher,
suddenly naked, sticking out; and then all the fantastic, incredible
movements of John's flight. Her mind would separate from him on that,
closing everything down, making his act eternal.

And, after all, the Germans hadn't come round the corner. Perhaps he
wouldn't have left her if they had really come. How did she know what he
wouldn't have done?

No. That was thin. Thin. She couldn't take herself in quite in that way.
It was the way she had tried with Gibson Herbert. When he did anything
she loathed she used to pretend he hadn't done it. But with John, if she
didn't give him up, her eyes must always be open. Perhaps they would get
beyond yesterday. Perhaps she would see other things, go on with him to
something new, forgetting. Her unique, beautiful happiness was smashed.
Still, there might be some other happiness, beautiful, though not with
the same beauty.

If John had got the better of his fear--She thought of all the men she
had ever heard of who had done that, coming out in the end heroic,
triumphant.

* * * * *

Three things, three little things that happened that morning, that showed
the way his mind was working. Things that she couldn't get over, that she
would never forget.

John standing on the hospital steps, watching Trixie Rankin and Alice
Bartrum as they started with the ambulances; the fierce fling of his
body, turning away.

His voice saying, "I loathe those women. There's Alice Bartrum--I saw her
making eyes at Sutton over a spouting artery. As for Mrs. Rankin they
ought to intern her. She oughtn't to be allowed within ten miles of any
army. That's one thing I like about McClane. He can't stand that sort of
thing any more than I can."

"How about Gwinnie and me?"

"Gwinnie hangs her beastly legs about all over the place. So do you."

John standing at the foot of the stairs, looking at the Antwerp men.
Their heads and faces were covered with a white mask of cotton wool like
a diver's helmet, three small holes in each white mask for mouth and
eyes. They were the men whose faces had been burned by fire at Antwerp.

"Come away," she said. But he still stood, fascinated, hypnotised by the
white masks.

"If I were to stick there, doing nothing, looking at the wounded, I
should go off my head."

"My God! So should I. Those everlasting wounds. They make you dream
about them. Disgusting dreams. I never real